Of Interest

Below is a comment from former Williams professor John Drew that I moved from a different thread. The key part:

Given the fact that there are no young, white male Republicans on the staff at Williams College now, I think I’m on very strong grounds to argue that I was among the first of probably many young white male Republicans mistreated by the institution. I don’t think it is wrong to identify this institutional behavior as reverse discrimination or reverse racism – and I use these words very carefully…

Before we look for evidence for and against this claim, I would curious to hear beforehand what facts on either side readers would find relevant. If, right now, you think Drew is wrong (or right), then what new information would cause you to re-evaluate your prior beliefs?

… the slightly (to put it kindly) unhinged Obama basher of the moment, John Drew. (If you don’t believe him, you can even see his Williams ID … and be sure to check out who, unsurprisingly, tracked him down in the blog comments … actually, I’m surprised that he and David weren’t buddies during their mutual tenure at Williams). Drew has achieved some minor notoriety in the extreme right-wing blogosphere via his claim that President Obama expressed … gasp … Marxist sympathies late one evening when Obama was a college sophomore. Awww, snap! What is his claim based on? An unverifiable description of a single conversation that Drew purportedly had with a teenaged Obama, some 30 years ago. I can certainly recall, with precise clarity, every conversation I had during chance meetings with strangers in the Perry keg line.

This guy’s blog and twitter feed read like they were written by Colbert staffers as a right-wing parody:

self infatuation? Check … “My own credentials, by the way, were somewhat spectacular since I was the winner of the William Anderson Award from the American Political Science Association in 1989” [yes, certainly “spectacular” to have published, apparently, a total of zero scholarly works other than various versions of a thesis written while in graduate school, and to hold down a series of part-time jobs at esteemed institutions like the University of Phoenix … this guy’s resume makes Bernard Moore look like James MacGregor Burns]

paranoid belief that any and all personal failure is explainable by the pernicious effects of affirmative action (including a demand for “reparations” because he was born white)? Check.

religious-style “conversion” from the evils of Marxism to the righteous ways of Conservatism? Check.

distaste for Obama’s perceived meterosexuality and attempt to link any critique of Obama, no matter how attenuated (or nonexistent) the connection, to Tony Rezko or Jeremiah Wright? Check.

Only a matter of time before this guy is doing the rounds with Hannity, Beck, O’Reilly, Coulter, Palin, and the rest of the hate-Obama brigade … I love, in particular, that Drew states that he is an “award winning” political scientist who taught at a few of our nation’s “formerly prestigious institutions.” I can only assume that he considers Williams to be “formerly” prestigious, unlike his more recent employers, like Hope International (the seventh best Christian business school in the country!) and UoP.